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Purpose

Think of this as a big family reunion where everyone is wearing name tags and looks interesting.

Membership is limited to family members. That's still a lot of people, many of whom are strangers to one another. The primary purpose of this site is to introduce these cousins, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, and multiple generations to one another.

That is why every member's full name is shown: there's no anonymity here.

Each of us has stacks of old photos, letters, and other ephemera that have been handed down to us, and much of their context and stories have not come with them. But by sharing them we often find someone who can help provide the background information and bring the scene to life. I'm trying to draw together the knowledge distributed across many individual family members so we can all benefit from it. For this I need your help. I hope you find the prospect of learning more about generations past and present sufficiently interesting that you will contribute your own knowledge to this enterprise.

Think of this as an oversized family photo album with greatly expanded and detailed information about the photos and their backstories.

Think of it as also a "Genealogy Lite" site, where you can trace how you're related to other members, as well as to the people shown in the photos or mentioned in the letters. Postings of announcements of births, birthdays, graduations, weddings, deaths, and other major life events are encouraged, especially if they include critical information like full name and date. I'll also be posting some death certificates because they not only give the full name of the decedent as well as the date of death, but also include the birth date, locations of each, as well as identify the parents, cause of death, and other useful information.

Also think of it as a place to learn from the trials and tribulations of others how to best respond to your own challenges.

I'm trying to walk a fine line here: I really want this to be a private site where family matters can be discussed safely. In public life we always have to present the best side -- everyone's competent, well-loved, and there's no internal trouble or strife. But our ancestors and we ourselves have not and do not live in such Nirvana. I want this to be a place where we can discuss the ills and troubles life has thrown at us and other family members -- not to speak ill of the dead or one another -- but to better understand the issues and the coping mechanisms and strategies others have used and learn from them what does or does not work.

If you really believe that a piece of information should also be available on some other site (and some of it should be), encourage the contributor of that information to post it there themselves. It is theirs and they should be the ones to decide where it is be posted.

--Dana Trout

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Privacy Statement

We do not use cookies, we do not subject you to advertising, we do not share your information with partner organizations or any commercial enterprise.

The only information we collect is what you have posted on our site, and it is visible to all members, including yourself. The only exception is postings that have been flagged, which if enough members flag them, will be deleted and no longer visible to anyone.

Note: Flags have not been implemented yet, but they will be!

There will be two kinds of flags:

• A "blinder" flag, by which a member can indicate they don't want to see this image again in the future but it's not generally objectionable. Examples are a much-hated ex, or someone who is so dearly loved but is so recently deceased that the grief is overwhelming.
• A flag indicating the image or associated comment(s) are quite inappropriate for this site. An example is anything from scammers or trolls, or flame wars.

  I can't be a full-time moderator so I will let the members themselves do the moderating by means of this flag. I would appreciate some suggestions as to how many members must flag an item before it is blocked.

--Dana Trout

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How it Works

This site works somewhat similarly to a slideshow in which you get to select the images shown - along with their comments - and you also get to choose the order in which they are displayed.

The list is circular in that if you go beyond the last image you are again shown the first, and likewise if you go backwards beyond the first you are shown the last.

You select which images you want in your 'show' by clicking on the Search button at the top right of the screen and typing a word or phrase in the search box either pressing ENTER or clicking on the button labeled "Search".

One important difference from a slide show is that members can read and write comments and stories that are related to the images. Those comments and captions will change the perception of the image from "some dude in a boat" to "Oh, that's my great grandfather when he was young and fishing on the Rogue River!" It will greatly help to bring family history to light, and will also allow members of our multitudinous and far-flung descendents to discover not only their ancesters but also their cousins, and for the older generations, their grand sons, daughters, neices, nephews, and grand-grands as well.

Please Help!

As you can see from the selection criteria, the information in the captions and comments is critical -- if there's nothing there there's no way to find the image. So please go through the images and for those that have no comments but you know at least some of the people or location, enter what you know. Doing so will greatly improve the usefulness of this site for everyone.

Currently the caption contains only the name of the person contributing the image. However, the goal is to update the captions so they contain the following information:

• Identify the people shown
• Identify the location
• Identify the occasion if it's "special" - birthday, family reunion, trip, and etc.
• Identify the date as best we can

This has to be a collaborative effort -- I don't think any one of us knows all the particulars of every image. Quite often the image contributors themselves know relatively little about the image -- it's just a neat photo of family member(s) they have in their stash but of which they know little. I have piles of those! It will be wonderful to get them properly identified so all family members can become much more familiar with their ancestors, cousins, uncles, and history.

You are welcome to suggest other schemes you feel will be especially helpful, but keep in mind that the search function is quick and easy to use.

--Dana Trout

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Search

There are two steps to the Search function:

• Select those pages whose captions or comments contain the search string, and
  
• Choose either to see the most recent comments first, or show a particular time period.

Search String

• You can search the captions and comments for a word, phrase, or even a substring. For instance, "fish" will find all occurrances of "fish", "fishing", "fishes", and even "standoffish".
• The result will be a 'show' of all images whose captions or comments contain your search string.
• If you leave the search string empty your 'show' will be every image.
• Enter the string you want to find. It is not case-sensitive: Audrey, audrey, AuDrEy all find the same images.



Sort Order

If you don't enter a start date, you will see the most recently commented upon image is first, followed the next most recent, and so on. Very handy for seeing new comments and images!

Start Date:

 Press Esc to cancel

Start Date Choose the date of the scene you want to see first. When you look at that page, you can go to the previous scene by tapping the left arrow, or the next by tapping the right arrow. Very handy when you want to look at a specific period of time with the images in proper chronological order.

Enter the Start Date in YYYYMMDD format, like 19690312. All non-numeric characters are ignored, so you can enter 1969.03.12, or 1969/03/12, or even 1969#03%12 and get the same result.

The year is always 4 digits, followed by 2 digits for the month and another 2 digits for the day. You can leave off the day, as in 196903, and even the month, as in 1969.

If you do not enter a Start Date your 'show' will start with the oldest scene.

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Send Photo (aka Upload)

You are currently signed in to the version that allows anyone to look at the site, but they (and you) cannot post pictures or comments.

In order to post pictures and comments you need to go to https://suerudnicki.com/ and choose the Enter the Gallery button. You will then have to supply your member name and password in order to participate.

If you don't have a member name and password yet, send an email to celebrate@suerudnicki.com. Be sure to include your name, how you know Sue, and a cell phone number to which we can text your member name and password.

Thank you! We look forward to your participation!